ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the issue of the tractorisation in the department of Oise and the growth of global output of French agriculture during the crucial years of the so-called Agricultural Revolution. It also examines the results of the agricultural surveys recorded in 1929, 1946 and the census of 1955, and a specific survey about tractorisation in Oise dated to 1950. The department of Oise was divided between regions characterised by large and capitalist estates, already highly tractorised before the Second World War, and some other regions in which familial estates were predominant, and characterised by a very low level of tractorisation, but in which there were alternative methods of motorisation. The survey of 1929 allows to understand the characteristics of the department which was divided between some regions dominated by capitalist farms that produced sugar beet and wheat, and other regions devoted to cattle breeding for milk, in which relatively small family farms were predominant.
